Alexandra Shulman

ALEXANDRA SOVERAL founded her award-winning eponymous skin care line in 2005, where she still hand-blends every product. Originally from Portugal, Alexandra moved to London 1987 to study Philosophy of Science, before dedicating her research to Anatomy, Physiology and Chemistry, becoming a respected skin specialist and product formulator for high quality brands.

Alexandra Soveral

Alexandra Wood

Born in 1986, Alexandra Zelman-Doring is a graduate of Brown, Columbia, and Oxford Universities. She is a poet, playwright, and actor, and recent co-founder of Throes Theater (www.throestheater.com). Based in New York City, she lives with her husband, clarinet player Naum Goldenstein.

Alexandra Zelman-Doring

Alexandre Antonelli is Director of Science of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, where he leads the work of over 350 scientists. A botanist by training, he was made Full Professor of Biodiversity at University of Gothenburg in Sweden aged 36, and founded the Gothenburg Global Biodiversity Centre and served as Cisneros Visiting Scholar at Harvard University before joining Kew. He remains an active researcher at the University of Gothenburg and the University of Oxford in the UK. This is his first book.

Alexandre Antonelli

Alexander Dumas was born in 1802 at Villes-Cotterets. He received very little education but when he entered the household of the future king, Louis-Philippe, he began to read veraciously and then to write. In 1839 he began writing novels dealing with the wars of religion and the Revolution, but he is most remembered for his historical novels, The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers.

Alexandre Dumas

Alexandria Bellefleur is a bestselling and award-winning author of swoony contemporary romance often featuring loveable grumps and the sunshine characters who bring them to their knees. Her debut novel, Written in the Stars, was a 2021 Lambda Literary Award winner and a 2020 winner of The Ripped Bodice Awards for Excellence in Romantic Fiction.

Alexandria Bellefleur

ALEXEI NAVALNY was a Russian opposition leader, an anti-corruption campaigner, and political prisoner who won international recognition and respect. His many international honours included the Sakharov Prize, the European Parliament’s annual human rights prize. He died in 2024.

Alexei Navalny

Alexei Sayle

Alexi Zentner

Alexia Casale is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University, as well as a script consultant and specialist human rights editor. Her young adult novel, The Bone Dragon, was shortlisted for the Waterstone's Children's Book Prize and her first adult novel, The Best Way to Bury Your Husband, set the darkly comic stage for her adult fiction. This is her second adult novel.

Alexia Casale

Alexina Anatole is a chef, presenter, and writer based in London. After reaching the final of MasterChef in 2021, she made a brave career change from the trading floor to the food world. Her debut cookbook – Bitter – was published by Square Peg, Vintage in September 2023 to critical acclaim from the likes of Nigella Lawson, Rukmini Iyer, and Waterstones. Anatole also writes Small Wins, a Substack newsletter that enhances your cooking and your life in small, manageable ways. She has been featured on BBC One’s Saturday Kitchen, Channel 4’s Sunday Brunch, and BBC Radio 4’s The Food Programme as well as social media platforms including MOB and TopJaw. She also runs sell-out events, including Sel, London’s most intimate supper club, and Cocoa POP, a chocolate-themed pop-up with chocolatier Octavia Lamb. Alexina is of mixed heritage: the granddaughter of chicken farmers from Cambridgeshire and Saint Lucian grandparents who arrived in London during the Windrush.

Alexina Anatole

Alexis Deacon graduated from the University of Brighton, where he studied Illustration, gaining a first class honours degree. Alexis Deacon was one of Booktrust's ten Best New Illustrators in 2008, and Beegu was a New York Times Book Review Best Illustrated Book of the Year and shortlisted for the Kate Greenaway Medal. Alexis lives in London.

Alexis Deacon

Alexis G Aïnouz

Alexis Henderson is a speculative fiction writer with a penchant for dark fantasy, witchcraft and cosmic horror. Growing up in one of America’s most haunted cities, Savannah, Georgia, instilled in her a life-long love of ghost stories. When she doesn’t have her nose buried in a book, you can find her painting or watching horror movies with her feline familiar. Her acclaimed adult books include The Year of the Witching, House of Hunger and An Academy for Liars. Her debut YA novel, When I Was Death, publishes in March 2026.

Alexis Henderson

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Born and raised in Yorkshire, Alexis moved to Cardiff where she completed a degree in print-making. She went on to exhibit in and around Wales and Leeds and has had two art residencies. After a stint working as a cook, Alexis moved to London with her small, second-hand printing press and began print-making again. Alexis works in lino which she cuts by hand. For inspiration, she looks to old matchbox covers, record sleeves, tea boxes, postcards, explorers, the circus and films. She has since moved back to Yorkshire, where she works from her studio. Alexis has designed many book covers and illustrated Dr Who: Twelve Angels Weeping but The Bear in the Stars is her first book as an author-illustrator.

Alexis Snell

Alexis Soyer

Alexis Stickland is a midwife, antenatal teacher and mother of three children who has been supporting new mums and their families for over 12 years. She was motivated by her own personal experience to team up with her friend and colleague Beccy Hands to launch The Motherbox – a company that delivers beautiful boxes of nourishing treats and self-care advice to new mums.

Alexis Stickland

Alexis Tocqueville

Alexis Zegerman

Alexis de Tocqueville

Alf Proysen

Alfie Boe

Alfie Moore

Alfie Small is a keen explorer, just like his older cousin, Charlie. And just like Charlie, Alfie is fearless! He loves adventures, speedboats, dragons and sword-fighting. He does NOT like wrinkly old pirates and interfering puffins. Unlike Charlie, Alfie always makes sure he gets back home in time for tea!

Alfie Small

Alfie Teale

Alfred Assollant was born in 1827. He was a teacher, journalist, writer and outspoken opponent of Napoleon III. He wrote more than thirty books over thirty years, including historical fiction, collected essays and a treatise on the rights of women, but only The Marvellous (But Authentic) Adventures of Captain Corcoran, published in 1867, was a success. In the 1870s, his wife, son and daughter died in quick succession and Assollant found himself poverty-stricken. In 1886 he also died, all but forgotten despite the continuing success of Corcoran, in a paupers’ hospital in Paris. 
 
Sam Miller was born and brought up in London. He studied History at Cambridge University and Politics at London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies, before joining the BBC in 1986, for which he has worked, on and off, ever since. In the early 1990s he was the BBC World Service TV and radio correspondent in Delhi, and on his return to the UK in 1993 was the presenter of the BBC’s current affairs programme, South Asia Report. Later he became the head of the Urdu service and subsequently Managing Editor, South Asia. He was posted back to Delhi in 2002 and has remained there ever since. He is the author of Delhi: Adventures in a Megacity (2009), Blue Guide: India (2012) and most recently A Strange Kind of Paradise: India Through Foreign Eyes, which was published by Jonathan Cape in 2014.

Alfred Assollant

Alfred Döblin

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Rosemary Conley

The Ultimate Gi Diet incorporates, and builds upon, the remarkable results and success stories of the original Gi Jean's Diet. 
 
Rosemary takes the scientifically proven success of Glycaemic Indexing (Gi) and represents it in a straightforward format with an easy to follow A-Z of Gi foods. The book contains no calculations or complex charts, but a simple diet and maintenance plan that promises dramatic weight loss - fast! 
 
There is 70% new material, with a greatly extended, easy to follow diet plan offering twice as many meal options and many more new recipes as well as menu plans for solo dieters and shift workers, tips on dining out, easy exercises to speed up weight loss and lots of no-nonsense advice and motivation from Rosemary. 
 
There are anecdotes and success stories for slimmers who have lost weight on the original Gi Jeans Diet, many of whom have reported amazing health benefits. It also features the story of five trial dieters who lost 8 stone between them in just nine weeks and who were featured on ITV's Central News.

The Ultimate Gi Jeans Diet

Tom Fort

Tom Fort, whose writing has been variously described as 'jocund', 'slightly loopy', ' unbelievably poignant' and 'deeply peculiar', travels around Britain experiencing some of its extremer climates and some of its more typical with a view to explaining what we make and have made of the British weather and what it has made of us. 
There are two interlocking strands: the story of those who - moved to an exceptional, sometimes obsessive degree by the fascination felt by so many of us - sought to know and understand our weather; and the story of its impact on us - our history, our culture, the way we think and behave.He focuses on the people - the clergymen, the gentlemen of leisure, the crackpots, visionaries, charlatans and shysters, all now largely or utterly forgotten - who volunteered and toiled for the cause, telling their stories by tracking them down to the places - usually their own gardens - where they indulged their quite passion for measuring rainfall, scrutinising dewdrops, tapping their barometers and peering at their thermometers.Once their age - of the amateur scientist - was over, and the business of weather forecasting was annexed by professionals with state backing it became a less colourful affair. 
The historical strand is, in part, a straightforward chronology; an account of the part played by climate in our history; how, when the sun shone and rain fell in gentle abundance, we prospered and multiplied; how, when the climate cooled, bringing wet summers and savage winters, we perished by plague and famine and retreated from places made unbelievable; how in time, as we matured from a rural, peasant society, our weather became less a matter of life and death (though always on absorbing interest).But beyond that there is another dimension to its influence on us - the moral and spiritual one.This is contentious, but intriguing: the extent to which we share as view of 'our weather', and the extent to which it may have shaped us into the people we are.

Under the Weather

Us and the Elements

Gilda O'Neill

In the 1940s, nearly a quarter of a million East Londoners decamped annually for the hopfields of Kent. Most of the pickers were women, who would take their children and other dependent relatives to stay in the hoppers' huts on the farms. 
 
This book records the memories of some of them, in their own lively words. Funny, nostalgic and ironic by turns, they tell of hopping as 'a break from him', an escape from the chesty London smog, respite from the bombs of war, as well as a source of income - and the nearest thing to a holiday that adults or children were likely to get. It was a time of hard graft, of laughter and companionship and long evenings around the faggot fire. In the memories of those who were there, it was a time when the sun always shone ... 
 
Gilda O'Neill was herself a hop picker as a girl. In this vivid book she not only pays tribute to the creative genius of the working class of London's East End, but examines the role of memory and oral history in our understanding of the past.

Lost Voices

Memories of a Vanished Way of Life

Michael Baigent

Richard Leigh

At thirty-seven, Colonel Count Claus von Stauffenberg, Chief of Staff of the Reich Reserve Army, was a charismatic figure destined for supreme command. The group of conspirators with whom he conceived the plot to kill Hitler in July 1944 was called 'Secret Germany'. That was also the name of the esoteric circle in which Stauffenberg as a young man had been a disciple of the mystic anti-Nazi magus and poet Stefan George. What was it that motivated this extraordinary aristocratic soldier, with the looks of a Hollywood idol, who was said to be the only man to stare the Fuhrer down until he averted his eyes? For Stauffenberg, the bomb plot was not a political move but a moral and spiritual necessity. After forty-two serious attempts on Hitler's life in the previous twenty years, why did he too fail? Had he succeeded, some say he would have become the de Gaulle of Germany, saviour of the nation soul. Even in failure, there can be no doubt of Stauffenberg's heroism. He stands as atonement for the Third Reich and a resolution of the conflicting myths of German culture. In this remarkable investigation, his whole life explains a troubled past to the present generation of Europeans as few have done in recent history.

Secret Germany

Julia Scheeres

All Julia Scheeres ever wanted was to have a normal, happy family. But when her fanatical mother decides they should all move to rural Indiana, Julia's life begins to unravel. 
 
In the blistering heat of the isolating community, Julia and her adopted brother David struggle together through adolescence. But with a mother who whose first concern is her church missionaries, and a distant father whose rare presence is resented by all and feared by others, home for Julia becomes a place of unspeakable secrets...

Another Hour On A Sunday Morning

Roger McGough

Roger McGough is one of Britain's best-loved poets, and something of a national institution. His name is ubiquitous with matter-of-fact Scouse humour, easy-going charm, and perfect observations of the idiosyncrasies of everyday life, whether you know him from his poetry, or from his regular broadcasts on television or radio. 
 
Roger first rose to prominence in the 1960s as a member of the pop group The Scaffold, who had two number one hits - Thank U Very Much and Lily The Pink. He began his poetry career performing with The Grimms, alongside fellow Liverpool poets Adrian Henri and Brian Patten, with whom he went on to publish The Mersey Sound, which remains the biggest-selling British poetry book ever. 
 
This is his autobiography - and like the best of his poetry it is packed full of hilarious observations, unbelievable stories, nostalgic reminiscences and bittersweet tales of love, life and loss. From his memories of growing up in Liverpool, playing in bombed out houses as a young boy, to the skiffle-crazed days of his adolescence, through to his time at university - and his meetings there with Larkin. He explores his sudden, almost overnight fame and success with Mike McCartney et all in The Scaffold, as well as his time working with George Martin, and co-writing the Yellow Submarine film script for the Beatles, through his international touring days, to the present. 
 
He certainly has many a story to tell about meeting some fascinating characters: Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Marlon Brando, Alan Ginsberg, Pete McCarthy and Salman Rushdie all appear amongst others, but it's his sheer story-telling nous, and his gift for observing the minutia of everyday life, and to completely capture a moment in time which sets this apart from other books. 
 
His life story is one that will be universally identifiable to those who grew up with him - who embraced the verve and irreverence of the sixties, only to end up as slightly embittered romantic cynics. This is done here in the most funny, poignant, bittersweet, and melancholic autobiography you will read this year - a man whose hugely popular take on it all resonates with honesty and humour.

Said And Done

Graham Hancock

"Supernatural: of or relating to things that cannot be explained according to natural laws." 
 
Less than 50,000 years ago mankind had no art, no religion, no sophisticated symbolism, no innovative thinking. Then, in a dramatic and electrifying change, described by scientists as "the greatest riddle in human history", all the skills and qualities that we value most highly in ourselves appeared already fully formed, as though bestowed on us by hidden powers. 
 
In Supernatural Graham Hancock sets out to investigate this mysterious "before-and-after moment" and to discover the truth about the influences that gave birth to the modern human mind. 
His quest takes him on a journey of adventure and detection from the stunningly beautiful painted caves of prehistoric France, Spain and Italy to remote rock shelters in the mountains of South Africa where he finds a treasure trove of extraordinary Stone Age art. 
 
He uncovers clues that lead him to travel to the depths of the Amazon rainforest to drink the powerful plant hallucinogen Ayahuasca with Indian shamans, whose paintings contain images of "supernatural beings" identical to the animal-human hybrids depicted in prehistoric caves and rock shelters. And hallucinogens such as mescaline, also produce visionary encounters with exactly the same beings. Scientists at the cutting edge of consciousness research have begun to consider the possibility that such hallucinations may be real perceptions of other "dimensions". 
 
Could the "supernaturals" first depicted in the painted caves and rock shelters be the ancient teachers of mankind? Could it be that human evolution is not just the "blind", "meaningless" process that Darwin identified, but something else, more purposive and intelligent, that we have barely even begun to understand?

Supernatural

Meetings with the Ancient Teachers of Mankind

A.N. Wilson

When this book begins, in the reign of Edward VII, Great Britain commands the mightiest empire the world has ever seen. By the time it ends, with the Coronation of Elizabeth II, Britain has emerged victorious from a world war, but ruined as a world power. How did Britain's power and influence decline? This is one of the questions which A. N. Wilson seeks to answer in his masterly follow-up to The Victorians.

After The Victorians

The World Our Parents Knew

Peter Singer

Jim Mason

Written with investigative vigour, provocative and controversial but always accessible, Eating is a hard-hitting exploration of our eating habits, making us look at what we eat as a moral issue. 
 
Organic foods are the fastest growing section of the food industry, and it is estimated that vegans are now almost as common as vegetarians. Veal consumption in the US has fallen by more than 75% since 1975, and in the UK, sales of free-range eggs have now passed in value sales of eggs from caged hens. Evidently we are concerned. But how concerned should we be about where our food comes from? Does the food we buy really affect the world around us? And what can we do? 
 
In Eating, philosopher Peter Singer and environmentalist Jim Mason follow three families with varying eating habits, from fast-food eaters to vegans, to explore how the food we eat makes its way to the table, and at what expense. The authors peel back each layer of food production, and examine how they ought to factor into our buying choices. Recognising that we are not all likely to become vegetarian or vegan, they go on to offer ways to make the most ethical choices within the framework of a diet that includes animal products.

Eating

The Presleys

The Number One Sunday Times Bestseller 
 
Forty years after his death, Elvis Presley remains one of the world's most beloved and iconic figures. 
 
There has been an impressive array of bestselling Elvis books over the years, but there has never been a book like this. Now, for the first time, Elvis, the man, husband father and artist, is remembered intimately and honestly by his ex wife Priscilla, daughter Lisa Marie and other close family members. 
 
Including deeply personal documents and previously unseen family photographs, this sensational book also features new interviews with family and friends. 
 
From personal diary entries to unearthed artefacts, Elvis by the Presleys is a publishing phenomenon and comes closer than any other book in revealing the private dreams and truths of the extraordinary and complex man, who became the king of Rock and Roll.

Elvis by the Presleys

Jack Webb

There has been no other epoch in American history where corruption, debauchery, sleaze and horrific murder has intersected with a society as speciously glittering and innocent as the Los Angeles of the 1940s and 50s. 
 
The Tinseltown of that age had movie star glamour on the surface but a dark, violent and unrepentant heart. None knew this dichotomy better than the Los Angeles Police Department, whose story became the most successful police drama in television history, Dragnet. Jack Webb was the star and creator of the show, but much of what he unearthed was too sensational to be broadcast on prime time. Those stories he saved for his classic, The Badge. 
 
Crimes like the sex slaying of Betty Short, the Black Dahlia: tortured for days, drained of blood, cut in two and dumped in Leimert Park, the subject of James Ellroy's masterpiece and one of the US's greatest unsolved murders. Narcotics, gambling, prostitution, thrill murders, serial killers -- all take their place in a book that shattered America's delusion of post-war innocence and defines our knowledge of modern crime even today. 
 
The Badge comes with an introduction by master of crime noir, James Ellroy.

The Badge

Henry Lincoln

An international bestseller - the secret history and shocking legacy of the Holy Grail 
 
A nineteenth century French priest discovers something in his mountain village at the foot of The Pyrenees which enables him to amass and spend a fortune of millions of pounds. The tale seems to begin with buried treasure and then turns into an unprecedented historical detective story - a modern Grail quest leading back through cryptically coded parchments, secret societies, the Knights Templar, the Cathar heretics of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and a dynasty of obscure French kings deposed more than 1,300 years ago. 
 
The author's conclusions are persuasive: at the core is not material riches but a secret - a secret of explosive and controversial proportions, which radiates out from the little Pyrenees village all the way to contemporary politics and the entire edifice of the Christian faith. It involves nothing less than... the Holy Grail.

The Holy Blood And The Holy Grail

Mavis Marsh

Andrew Crofts

On 12th October 1995, Mavis Marsh answered her door to the news every parent dreads most. 'It's your son,' the policeman told her. 'He's been in an accident.' Only hours earlier Matthew had been set for a dazzling future but, in one terrible night, a devastating tragedy altered everything. 
 
Days later, Mavis found herself standing at her son's bedside as doctors told her to give up all hope. According to them, the damage to Matthew's brain was too severe for him to recover, and the boy she had known and loved was gone forever. 
 
But Mavis and her husband Keith couldn't give up on their only son. And refusing to accept the diagnosis, they started to work with Matthew themselves, desperately urging their comatose son to fight. For months they tried, to no avail. But then, almost half a year later, he suddenly started to respond ...

Shattered

Gyles Brandreth

This is the definitive account of one of the most extraordinary stories of our time. Gyles Brandreth, acclaimed biographer of the Queen and Prince Philip, presents a unique portrait of their son, Charles, Prince of Wales, and of the one 'non-negotiable' love of his life, Camilla Shand, now Duchess of Cornwall. 
 
What are Charles and Camilla really like? What is their heritage? What has made them the way they are? This is both a revealing portrait of two unusual individuals and a family saga like no other, told with unrivalled authority and insight - and humour - by a best-selling writer who has met all the key characters in the drama: Charles, Camilla, Diana, their children, their families and their friends.

Charles & Camilla

Barbie Probert-Wright

Jean Ritchie

Two sisters. A broken childhood. A heartbreaking journey. 
 
The extraordinary true story of surviving the unimaginable ... 
 
In 1945, seven-year-old Barbie and her sister Eva were trapped, terrified, in wartorn Germany. With their father missing, and hundreds of miles from their mother, news of the approaching army left them confronted with an impossible choice: to face invasion, or to flee on foot. 
 
Eva, aged nineteen, was determined to find her mother. For Barbie, twelve years younger, the journey was to be more perilous but, spurred on by her sister's courage and her desperate desire to be reunited with her mother, she joined Eva on a journey no child should ever have to endure. 
 
Over three hundred miles across a country ravaged by a terrible war, they encountered unimaginable hardship, extraordinary courage and overwhelming generosity. Against all the odds, they survived. But neither sister came out of the journey unscathed ...

Little Girl Lost

Ben Mezrich

For nearly five years, he was known as the 'Darling Of Las Vegas'; the biggest high roller to hit Sin City in decades, a hotshot, twenty one year-old kid with a seemingly unlimited bankroll and an even more unlimited lust for big money action. His name was Semyon Dukatch, and stories swirled in his wake. Some said he was a Russian arms dealer, others a pop star from Eastern Europe. But the truth was even more unlikely: he was a twenty-one year old graduate student who had a plan that would one day make him richer than anyone could possibly imagine. 
 
The Darling of Las Vegas quickly became a legend in the casino world. He is the only person banned from the island of Aruba. He was held, at gunpoint, in a cave in Monte Carlo and told that if he ever returned, he'd be murdered. And he made millions of dollars playing blackjack, using three simple techniques that gave him the edge, techniques that are revealed in this book for the first time. 
 
This is his story, the ultimate true story of Las Vegas, the book Vegas doesn't want you to read...

Breaking Vegas

Leslie Thomas

From Barnardo boy to original virgin soldier; from apprentice journalist in London's Fleet Street to famous novelist... 
 
At times funny, at times sad, but always honest and utterly compulsive, Leslie Thomas's story is straight out of fiction. As an orphan, he picked his way through the rubble of post-war Britain and was sent on national service to the Far East. Later he became a Fleet Street reporter, with hilarious experiences to relate, and then became the bestselling author of The Virgin Soldiers - the novel that, although scandalous in its day, is now recognised as a classic of its kind. He is also the creator of Dangerous Davies: The Last Detective, which has been adapted into a popular television series. In 2005, Leslie Thomas was awarded an OBE for services to literature. 
 
With a new introduction for this edition, this is an amazing story, and Leslie Thomas's magic touch brings it crackling to life with warmth, wit and humour.

In My Wildest Dreams

Steven Jacobi

What makes people laugh? Where does the urge to make people laugh come from? And just how hard can it really be to become a stand-up comedian? In pursuit of the answers to these questions - and more - writer and comedy obsessive, Steven Jacobi has set himself a horrifying task: to perform as a stand-up comic in six comedy clubs around Britain. (The Amused Moose, at the Enterprise in Chalk Farm; XSMalarkey in Manchester; the Cheeky Monkey at the Station in Kings Heath, Birmingham; Ha! in New York; Oi! Oi! in Eastbourne and Up the Creek in Greenwich, London.) 
As he gathers together material for his big adventure, Jacobi tracks down his comedy heroes, Ken Dodd and Woody Allen and seeks their advice and wisdom. He looks at the long tradition of British humour and looks to, among others, a Python, Eric Sykes, Frank Skinner and Steve Coogan to get their take on comedy. 
Only then does he embark on his ordeal, logging - in unsparing detail - the venues, audiences, hecklers and humiliation. All the while charting his all-important material, evolving - and hopefully refining - as he travels across the country on his masochistic odyssey.

Laughing Matters

Gerard Jones

In the depths of the Depression, out of the crowded tenements of New York and Cleveland, the comic book superhero leapt into being. Out of a mix of geekiness, science fiction, and outsider yearning, a crew of young men from working-class Jewish neighbourhoods and shady backgrounds created a series of blue-eyed, chisel-nosed crime fighters and adventurers who quickly captured the imaginations of young and old. Within a few years their creations had spawned a new genre that still dominates youth entertainment seventy years later. 
 
Gerard Jones draws on exhaustive research to portray how the immigrant experience and an outsider mentality shaped the vision of the make-believe hero, while a bizarre melting-pot of left-wing politics, mob money and the worlds of soft-porn and detective magazines contributed to the publishing world that produced the comics and brought them to millions. He chronicles how the success of the comics provoked a backlash that nearly destroyed the industry in the 1950s, and how later they surged back, inspiring a new generation to transmute pre-war fantasies into art, literature, blockbuster movies and graphic novels. 
 
Men of Tomorrow rivetingly demonstrates how the creators of the superheroes established their crucial place in the modern imagination.

Men Of Tomorrow

Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book

Mark Wallington

Mark Wallington has a dream. He is going to change the face of British comedy. 
 
Unfortunately for the residents of north London, he's going to finance this dream by becoming a gardener. 
 
The result is The Day Job, an account of a year spent working in other people's gardens: people like Mrs Fleming who is convinced there is buried treasure in the bottom bed; Mr Walters who is trying to create a fascist state policed by gnomes in his well-guarded plot in Gospel Oak; Mrs Glover who is probably the most attractive woman living in Britain; and poor Mr Nugent, who likes to save his urine in jam jars and pour it over his compost. 
 
Over four seasons Wallington crosses Hampstead Heath from job to job. He survives brushes with the evil contract gardeners who keep trying to knock him off his bicycle. He strives to impress literary agent Herman Gapp who might represent him - depending on what sort of job he does on Gapp's Alpine Terrace. He even finds time to fall for a housecleaner-cum-actor named Helen, as he becomes part of a strange band of artistes, each with a day job of their own, all waiting for that first break. 
 
This is the story of long nights spent in the back room of a pub trying to write unsolicited scripts, and of much longer days spent trying to understand the British and their strange obsession with gardening.

The Day Job

Adventures of a Jobbing Gardener

Travels with Boogie is the story of two city slickers - one an unattractive but streetwise mongrel from Stockwell, the other the long-suffering author - and how they came to terms with England's countryside and waterways. 
 
First they had to survive against all odds as they embarked on a heroic journey up hill and down dale, with rucksacks full of Kennomeat, along Britain's longest coastal footpath - from Somerset to Devon, from Cornwall to Dorset. And they did it. Then, undaunted, they took on the treacherous waters of the Thames. Not exactly as Mark had planned, however: this time his companion was to be the delectable Jennifer - but she was held up at the office, and when Boogie was dropped off at the kennels the other dogs complained. 
 
Travels with Boogie is a witty and fascinating account of a mismatched couple and of the people they meet and places they visit.

Travels With Boogie

500 Mile Walkies and Boogie Up the River in One Volume

Robin Campbell

Ali Campbell

Born and raised in a council house on Birmingham's notorious Balsall Heath under the watchful eye of their staunchly socialist, folk singer father, Robin and Ali Campbell were to become members of the most successful reggae band in the world, a career that has spanned four decades. 
 
But this is not the autobiography of a pop band legend, but rather the story of two working class brothers crashing and burning and fighting back against the odds. It is the story of growing up in the 1960s to the sounds of Motown and ska, folk music and skiffle and radical politics and - most importantly - the new and infectious sound of reggae that was to capture the ears of these two teenage kids from the Midlands. 
 
Instilled by their father from an early age to always do things their own way, the brothers - in between dead end jobs and the dole office - put together a band that would show Balsall Heath what reggae was all about . Mismanagement, drink, drugs, divorce, paranoia and jail terms would dog the band and threaten to destroy it all - including the brother's relationship and yet they come to amass record sales in excess of 50 million, with nearly 50 hit singles to their credit - from 'Red Red Wine' and 'Don't Break My Heart' to 'Homely Girl' and 'I Got You Babe'.

Blood And Fire

Bob Geldof

Bob Geldof first visited Africa in 1984. The following year, Live Aid inspired a generation to raise millions for the starving in Africa. 
 
Over twenty years on, passion undiminished, Geldof returns to what he calls the Luminous Continent. This is his personal diary. Unflinchingly honest, and stunningly illustrated with his own photographs, Geldof in Africa paints a unique picture of this extraordinary and beautiful land.

Geldof In Africa

Patricia Atkinson

How often have you eaten a mushroom that you picked yourself that morning? Or sat on a boat opening and eating oysters as you lift them from the sea? Or partaken of a seven course feast of game to celebrate the success of the chasse? 
 
When Patricia Atkinson - bestselling author of The Ripening Sun - first moved to France, her intention was simply to establish a vineyard. Over the years, however, she found herself becoming integrated into a way of life that, had she stayed in England, she would hardly have believed existed. Grounded in the rhythms of the land and the seasons, daily life in Patricia's south-western corner of France is dictated by a series of rituals and celebrations that we have long lost in our supermarket age. 
 
La Belle Saison is Patricia's eulogy to this way of life: a testament to the timelessness of the beautiful French countryside, the bounty of the land, and the generous-hearted French neighbours who showed Patricia that a simple life has many rewards. In France, every season is 'la belle saison', offering up its gifts to those willing to appreciate and look after the land.

La Belle Saison

Guy Deutscher

'A persuasive and beautifully written take on how languages are constantly evolving... an enthralling read about human psychology and anthropology as well as linguistics.' ALEX BELLOS 
___________________________________ 
 
'Language is mankind's greatest invention - except of course, that it was never invented'. So begins Guy Deutscher's fascinating investigation into the evolution of language. No one believes that the Roman Senate sat down one day to design the complex system that is Latin grammar, and few believe, these days, in the literal truth of the story of the Tower of Babel. But then how did there come to be so many languages, and of such elaborate design? If we started off with rudimentary utterances on the level of 'man throw spear', how did we end up with sophisticated grammars, enormous vocabularies, and intricately nuanced shades of meaning? 
 
Drawing on recent, groundbreaking discoveries in modern linguistics, Deutscher exposes the elusive forces of creation at work in human communication. Along the way, we learn why German maidens are neuter while German turnips are female, why we have feet not foots, and how great changes in pronunciation may result from simple laziness... 
_____________________ 
 
'Powerful and thrilling' SPECTATOR 
'Really ought to be read by anyone who persists in complaining that the English language is going to the dogs' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 
'I was enthralled' A.S. Byatt, for GUARDIAN 'Books of the Year' 
'Highly original... clever and convincing... this book will stretch your mind' INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY 
'Fascinating' BOSTON GLOBE

The Unfolding Of Language

Valentino Rossi

Valentino Rossi is the greatest living motorcyclist. His legions of fans adore him (over 4,000 turned up to see him in Leicester Square last March). He has fought through the 125 and 250 class groups to win the World Championships five times and has been ranked in the top three places at the World Championships for the last nine years. He is currently the MotoGP World Champion, and has won on a Honda bike - considered the best - and most recently on a Yamaha - considered the worst. He is arguably the greatest racer ever - and certainly the most entertaining - his post race antics and cheeky personality have won him as many fans as his on-track prowess. He is the kind of star who only comes along once in a while - a Muhammad Ali or Pele - hugely talented, massively driven, yet also scorching charismatic, unnervingly rebellious and totally endearing - a twentieth-century version of the hell-raisers of old. 
 
All who know Rossi say he is a consummate professional, that he works harder than anyone could ever realise, but that most of all, he still loves what he does. He just seems to win more because he's still enjoying himself so much.He is infamous for his on the edge riding, pushing himself and his bike to the very limits of what they can do, and screaming around racecourses in record times. But he is also well known for his good looks, his techni-coloured hair and cheeky humour - and for his sheer youthful exuberance in victory - his post-match victory laps have become a thing of legend. Previously he has driven victory laps in full beach gear, including flip-flops, with a man sized chicken riding pillion (and also, in a jibe to Max Biaggi who had an unceremonious break-up with the model Naomi Campbell, with a life size doll of Claudia Schiffer strapped on behind him.) 
 
His warmth of character coupled with his amazing career statistics to date - his first GP win aged 17, his first world title at 18, his first 500 class win at 21 and his first MotoGP win at 22 - mean that this young man has the motorcycle racing world at his feet. His raw talent coupled with his firm belief in the 'entertainment' aspect of his sport and the importance of his fans, means that he really is the David Beckham of bikes - he has done the near impossible and transcended his own territory. His appeal - being at the top of his game without being a purist, still being seen to be young and excited by the game, and being a perfectionist on and off the track when it comes to his driving - means that he really is one of the superstars of the sporting world.

What If I Had Never Tried It

Lisa Chaney

When James Matthew Barrie died, in 1937, his funeral was an occasion for national mourning. Crowds gathered; reporters and newsreel men came to record the day, and many well-known figures followed the coffin to its resting place in the little churchyard up on the hill. In London, a month later at St Paul's Cathedral a memorial service was held for the Scottish weaver's son who died Britain's playwright extraordinaire. 
 
A succession of novels and long-running plays had brought Barrie enormous wealth, critical acclaim, an hereditary Baronetcy and the Order of Merit. His public following extended to Hollywood where his work was performed by the stars of the silver screen. Unhappily such achievements did little to ameliorate the strains in Barrie's private life. Hampered by a stigmatising divorce, he was also struck by a series of tragic bereavements from which he never fully recovered. At the same time as savouring his public image, Barrie gave no more than a handful of interviews. During his lifetime this inscrutable, enigmatic man succeeded in his desire to remain only partially known. 
 
Barrie was already famous for sophisticated political satires and social comedies when, with the creation of Peter Pan, his immense artistic gift was displayed at its extraordinary best. In the play, where 'All children except one grow up', Barrie had touched on a universal nerve, the problem of growing up. With Peter Pan he created one of the greatest twentieth-century myths and a work of art quite unlike anything that had gone before. It became a part of the common culture of the Western world, and is as relevant today as on that first performance one hundred years ago.

Hide-And-Seek With Angels

The Life of J.M. Barrie

Hugo Vickers

Harold Nicolson called her 'the greatest Queen since Cleopatra', while Cecil Beaton called her 'a marshmallow made on a welding machine'. Stephen Tennant said: 'She looked everything that she was not: gentle, gullible, tenderness mingled with dispassionate serenity, cool, well-bred, remote. Behind this veil she schemed and vacillated, hard as nails.' Who was she? 
 
The Queen Mother's story has not yet been properly told. This was partly due to her long life, and the difficulty that always exists when a biography of a living person is attempted, partly because she was a queen - and the real person gets hidden behind the perceived image - and partly because she is hard to pin down. 
 
From her privileged aristocratic childhood, to the Abdication and the problems with Diana - this book questions how she faced her challenges and crises, assesses her role, how powerful she was, and how she coped. This is a candid, personal portrait of one of Britain's most loved national treasures. 
 
Hugo Vickers, an acknowledged expert on the House of Windsor, has spent seventeen years researching this book, and observed the Queen Mother in public and private over a period of forty years.

Elizabeth, the Queen Mother

The Dead Sea Scrolls were found in caves 20 miles east of Jerusalem in 1947 and 1956. Now Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, co-authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, have succeeded in uncovering what has been described as 'the academic scandal par excellence of the twentieth century': the story of how and why up to 75 per cent of the eight hundred ancient Hebrew and Aramaic manuscripts, hidden for some nineteen centuries, have, until very recently, remained concealed from the rest of the world. Through interviews, historical analysis and a close study of both published and unpublished scroll material, the authors are able to reveal the true cause of the bitter struggle between scholars, for these documents disclose nothing less than a new account of the origins of Christianity and an alternative and highly significant version of the New Testament.

The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception

Donovan Leitch

Donovan's autobiography charts his life from a post-war, Glaswegian childhood to the height of an international career as one of the leading figures of the 1960's music scene. 
 
Always feeling like an outsider he found relief through music and poetry. The book reveals how he came to be influenced by Buddhist teachings and the music of Woody Guthrie and Joan Baez. The book explores the significance of falling deeply in love with the woman who was to become his muse, and the profound sense of loss he felt when their relationship came to an end, and how the loss affected him both personally and creatively. 
 
A leader of the folk revival in both Britain and America, the book recounts how he rose to be an international star, releasing songs such as Mellow Yellow and Catch the Wind, and his most successful album, Sunshine Superman. Donovan is acknowledged as one of the most significant cultural icons of the 1960's. 
 
The book provides a frank account of his early experiments with drugs and his search for self. He reveals the story of how he developed friendships with Baez, Dylan and the Beatles, with whom he a shared spiritual sojourn to meditate with the Maharishi in India. Donovan's autobiography offers first-hand insights into his music and poetry, recollects his rise to fame and the way in which destiny was to play a hand by re-uniting him with the lost love of his life through a chance meeting.

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